MSU Medical Student Named Howard Hughes Research Fellow

Michigan State University College of Human Medicine student Monica Pomaville has been selected by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, or HHMI, to participate in its Medical Research Fellows Program.

She will join other medical, dental and veterinary students in conducting in-depth, mentored biomedical research. Starting this summer, each HHMI fellow will spend a year pursuing basic, translational, or applied biomedical research at one of 32 academic or nonprofit research institutions across the United States.

Pomaville’s fellowship institution is Harvard Medical School where she will be working in a lab focused on neuroblastoma, the most common extracranial tumor found in children.

“I am very excited to have this opportunity to study neuroblastoma in such a stimulating environment and to have the support of MSU, the Howard Hughes Medical Fellowship, my past mentors and Dr. George’s lab at Dana Farber Cancer Institute,” said Pomaville, a third-year student at the college’s Flint campus.

Pomaville’s study will look at a particularly lethal form of neuroblastoma that holds poor prognosis for children affected.

Now, 28 years after the Med Fellows Program was first launched, it has helped more than 1,700 medical, veterinary, and dental students establish a foothold in the research world.